That thing José Ramírez is doing at a higher rate than anyone (and it's out of his control)
Remember when popular things came in threes?
The Three Ninjas. The Charmed sisters (wait, they added a fourth?). The third season of Game of Thrones. All of the good stuff.
Speaking of which, the three-spot is where baseball’s best hitters once resided, and José Ramírez has started all 38 games there this year for Cleveland. He’s been 49 percent better than average in wRC+ (100 is league average), slashing .263/.348/.577 and demonstrating batted-ball data that suggests, if you can believe it, he should be even better than his surface-level stats.
See? Good stuff.
He’s also doing something at a higher rate than any other hitter in the sport. Unfortunately, it’s not anything a run producer wishes to achieve.
And it’s totally out of his hands.
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If you want to find articles and theories about batting order optimization, the only thing that may rival them in number are YouTube channels devoted to analyzing every detail of the latest Marvel movie (yes, I watch them). And the truth is — this is painful to admit — it doesn’t matter as much as we think. The easiest way to stack a lineup is to ensure your best hitters get the most plate appearances. Hard stop.
Otherwise, we’re arguing about fractions of runs over prolonged stretches. I mean, yes, do it, because … uhhh … why wouldn’t you? But also, leave the poor individual sending out the lineup on the team’s Twitter account alone.
The Indians, for example, aren’t a reshuffled batting order away from a top 10 offense. It won’t change the fact that César Hernández has floated between unlucky and underwhelming and Eddie Rosario has been downright disappointing. It won’t solve the club’s major first base issues or somehow allow Austin Hedges to put bat to ball. But we are seeing one lineup theory play out in real time. And it’s a simple fix.
“The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball” is now approaching the driving age, but it’s been propelling lineup discussion forward for some time. Among the many topics discussed in the book by authors Tom Tango, Andrew Dolphin and Mitchell Litchtman was the best way to fill out the lineup card based on what sorts of hitting profiles make the most sense in each spot.
This is where the increasingly accepted practice of elevating your best hitter to the two-hole comes from and, perhaps, also helped paved the way for a new type of leadoff hitter that led with on-base percentage and not necessarily blazing speed. But, most important for this discussion, they discuss why putting your best hitter in the three spot might not make sense, pointing to the number of times the third hitter in a lineup strolls to the plate with nobody on base and two outs.
Not the ideal time to start a rally.
No one knows that better than Ramírez. In fact, no batter who has seen at least 50 pitches this year has stepped into the box with a higher percentage of bases empty and two-out situations than the switch-hitting infielder (26.6 percent).
That’s one way to explain why he’s barely hanging around the Top 50 of RBI stats, entering Monday with 11 homers and just 22 runs batted in despite ranking 22nd in wRC+. Not only is Ramírez seeing fewer runners on base — just 19 percent of his 158 plate appearances have come with a runner in scoring position — but when he’s reaching on anything that isn’t a homer, the two outs greatly reduce rally chances.
Some of that is just the reality of the struggling lineup that surrounds him. The only other hitter that has had some meaningful offensive surges is Franmil Reyes, who has hit anywhere from one or two spots behind Ramírez this season. There is only so much that can be done that doesn’t result in increased production from others or changes coming in the form of replacements.
But there is something small that could help: How about elevating their best hitter to the most important lineup slot, the two spot?
Cleveland’s two-hole hitters this year has ranged from Hernández and Jordan Luplow to Amed Rosario and Jake Bauers. Over the weekend, Terry Francona put Eddie Rosario ahead of Ramírez to potentially spark the veteran, who promptly gave away an out late in the game Sunday with a sacrifice bunt, leading to an intentional walk of Ramírez and a Reyes double play to kill the threat.
Probably not what Francona had in mind.
If you want to make yourself sick, just look at what the two spot in Francona’s order has produced this year (warning, this may hurt): a .176 average, two homers and a wRC+ of 42, the lowest in baseball, trailing the Tigers by 24 points.
Major yikes.
Thirteen AL teams — 13! — are getting more production of their No. 9 hitters this year. No, the Indians aren’t one of them.
And remember, every spot in the batting order you drop, you lose plate appearances over the course of a season. For a team desperate for offense, every game that ends without Ramírez receiving an extra chance to impact the game is a failure.
So, the answer seems simple — bump everybody up a slot.
[Silent stare]
No … that’s it. That’s the plea.
There’s no guarantee that it will increase the number of runners on base in front of Ramírez — without much help, juggling the order won’t amount to much — but it’s difficult to see it being much worse. If nothing else, it might occasionally offer him a fifth plate appearance in the final frames or, at the very least, reduce the number of times a two-out double by Ramírez piques interest but leads to a pile of nothing.
Sorta like that [insert latest Marvel show here], am I right?